1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to high strength carbon fibers and non-woven fabrics containing the said carbon fibers as a principal component thereof. More particularly, it relates to high strength, high modulus discontinuous carbon fibers which are spun from a mesophase pitch by a melt-blowing process and are resistive to forming of cracks and it relates to non-woven fabrics containing the said carbon fibers as a principal component thereof.
2. Summary of the Invention
The mesophase pitch based and melt blown discontinuous carbon fibers of the present invention are characterized in that a large number of small domains assemble to form a mosaic structure on the cross-section of the said carbon fibers, each domain has an average equivalent diameter of from 0.03 .mu.m to 1 .mu.m and has nearly unidirectionally oriented folded carbon layers. Since the orientation direction of the carbon layers suddenly changes on the boundary of the small domains, even when cracks are generated, cracks hardly grow over the boundary. It is an advantage of the present invention that high tensile strength and high fatigue strength carbon fibers can be attained.
The carbon fibers of the present invention are produced according to the melt-blowing process and are collected easily in sheet form, they have an advantage of low production cost, and have a superiority in the use for non-woven fabrics.